Is there a problem with how the media works today and is this connected to why our political system seems so blocked?

There is a problem at the heart of Journalism today. The News System is not designed to advance conversation.

Journalism instead feeds on “Conflict”. News is Conflict. And of course  Conflict is news.  But in many cases, the other side of the reported “Conflict” is phony.

Look at all the phony statements in the Immigration story that have been given credence by the media!

News as it is today is not designed to build knowledge but only to tell us what happened recently. Worse, Journalists position themselves as being above the conflict as the neutral arbiter between the poles. I call this “The View from Nowhere”. Of course good debates and worthwhile conversation demands moderation. Of course there is a role for a neutral broker. But the good moderator ensures that the quality of the questions is high.This is not what Journalism does today.

So it can be no surprise that our political system then feeds into this. If you want to be in the News, you play the poles. The “Real” is opposed often to the “Fake”. So in the case of climate change, the fake is still given legitimacy. In Immigration a legitimate question is “Do immigrants lower wages” but if there is an answer to that question that is true, the untrue answer may be given equal weight. No wonder people are emotionally aroused and unsure.

So this view of the world as being all about conflict, much of it illegitimate, and all about the extremes on either side of the conflict informs our political process. So our media and our politics tend toward entropy and ritualized conflict.

Journalists do not want to make helping the nation move to a solution part of their work. They see that as “politics” and avoid it. So we end up getting stuck and we lose trust in both our media and our political system.

So what would be a better way for us?

It will help if we can see that the “View from Nowhere” is a liability.

It is the Pontius Pilate position enabling the media to wash its hands from the ethical choice that confronts it.

The View from Nowhere was thought to build trust. In reality it destroys it.

To build trust, you have to tell us where you are coming from. Not who you voted for, or your personal ideology. But what brings you to this topic? What then are you trying to accomplish? What does success then look like to you? What is your goal?

Don’t be  God or a Martian looking down upon us mere mortals. Be part of what is going on. Articulate where you are coming from and be clear about what you desire as an outcome.

So then Jay what is your advice for us at KETC?

This is how Jay opens his interview at KETC's Homeland Site - Our site on Immigration. He and Doc Searls and Euan Semple have been advising us as to how best to improve our work to offer up an alternative to the polarization of conventional media.

His advice as to what to do is on the site - please follow the link

Hitler arrives at Nuremberg for rally 1933 – another very popular orator

Normally I don’t write about politics here.

But not today.

I recently posted a note to Hoda Kotb from the Today Show. She had an item on her Facebook page asking what she should cover in her show.

Most of the answers posted related to shoes or clothing or divorces.  I told her she should speak out about the growing trend to publicly accepted racism in our culture, with Muslims paying the role of the Jews this time.

So far, she is sticking to shoes. Kotb, by the way, is Arabic for book.

The Failings of Public Education

When I went to school in the 1960s, almost all of my teachers were women.

They were women because in those days, the only jobs women could get were teacher, nurse or secretary. And so the smartest went into teaching.

And they were good. Very good.

When new opportunities opened for women in the 70s, (and I am old enough to remember when a woman going to Harvard Business School was still a big story), the smartest flocked to careers as lawyers or MDs or CEOs.  They followed the money.

In the days when women had no choice, schools could get away with paying teachers $23,000 a year, or less for women, and no one said a word – and they were able to attract the best talent in the country.

When other opportunities became available, the schools should have responded by making teaching as competitive as law, and paying as much.  But they didn’t. Instead, we debased the public educational system in America.  Oh, there are still those who teach out of pure dedication, but that’s like asking people to go to medical school and then head off to work for Medcin sans Frontiers. There are those who do, but not many.

I taught for many years at both Columbia University and NYU, and over the course of time, I watched as the level of basic education that my students came in with dropped and dropped and dropped. They were not stupid. Far from it, they were just uneducated – increasingly so. And interestingly, they didn’t care.  Most did not know the difference between Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, and if they had to find out, they could always go to the web and Google it.

What we eroded was a basic foundation of fundamental knowledge, which by now, I think, is pretty much gone.

And the price we pay is that we have created a society without the ability to process information through any kind of historical wisdom.

So when Glenn Beck goes to the Lincoln Memorial and proclaims that he is the true heir to the Civil Rights Movement; when he and his Tea Party follower proclaim that the President is the racist here; when he fundamentally rewrites the history of this country to suit his own ends, one would think that an educated nation would laugh him off the stage.

But they don’t.

They don’t because we no longer have an educated nation that can process what he says through a lens of intelligence.

We have a nation of people who get their information superficially, and lacking in any kind of grounding of basic education, can be easily swayed by demagoguery of the worst kind.

For two generations we have ignored the infrastructure of this country.

Our bridges rust out and collapse.

That makes news.

Well our schools are rusted out and collapsing. And when the education of our nation rots and collapses, its is a whole lot more serious than when a bridge collapses, or deciding which shoes to buy.

What is happening today at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Dr. King’s I Have A Dream Speech is nothing short of pornography. Public pornography based on a collection of lies.

But we have a public that has lost the ability to discern the truth for itself.

This is how it starts.

And if you know anything about history, you already know how it finishes.

But alas, most people don’t even know that.

But they will. Sadly.

 

I quote Michael Rosenblum in full today. For he touches on the peril that confronts America today.

Can America get its Mojo back?

In Jane Jacobs great book Dark Age Ahead - she makes the point that the signifier for a great states's decline is growing xenophobia. Leading to a retreat into a fortress culture. This is what happened to China and what happened to the Muslim world. Both were many steps ahead of Europe but bothy retreated into themselves.

In the "fortress" thinking is not allowed or welcome. As Michael notes - many do not care that they know nothing. There is a pride in ignorance.

Such a society will look to the simple and to demagogues. Such a society will set up the the preconditions of "Collapse" - a structural inability to respond to challenges.

Don't we see signs of this inability today? As I see it we do.

This is why I am passionate in my support for public TV and radio's efforts to expand their role from providing good content to providing a safe place where the community can have a discourse about issues that are important to them.

At KETC in St Louis this effort began with creating such a safe place to help each other cope with the mortgage crisis. Now we are trying to find a way of facilitating the kind of discourse that will enable America to have a better approach to Immigration - an issue that will surely determine America's future as much as any other.

WGTE in Toledo will be doing the same soon on local agriculture.

My hope is that such an approach - of having a local in depth discourse on challenging topics such as who is an American? How we get our food? Jobs and the economy? Health? Education? Is our only chance of breaking out of the polarization of our politices and the over influence of the corporate will.

I don't see any other opportunity? Do you?

This is a small video made by Selena Wilkinson at the KETC Nine Academy.

The Nine Academy is a new idea for Public TV - it is a Video school at the station for the Public - where people can learn how to be film makers. They do this for themselves and also for the station.

So what's new? Until now, Public TV was very much like regular TV in that while it looked to the public for funding, it made programs just like all the rest of TV - with professionals. The Public did not get on the air nor did the public make TV.

This is what is new at KETC. We are creating the space on our web for the public to have their own content and we are using our physical space to train them to become good at this.

This film on soccer is part of an entire series on Soccer in St Louis. St Louis is the home of native soccer in the US. We have made a professional/traditional documentary and we are surrounding this with content produced by our community.

Next week - we go further - we take one of the most challenging issues of our time - Immigration - and bring the wide voice of the community to the public. Please watch this space for more

New immigration laws in Arizona ... should Missouri adopt them too?

Following the new immigration law that has led to calls to boycott her state, Arizona's governor has signed a bill banning ethnic studies classes in public schools that "promote resentment" of other racial groups.

Gov. Brewer's signature for this new bill comes less than a month after she approved a state law that requires immigrants to carry their registration documents at all times and allows police to question immigration status in the process of enforcing any other law.

Locally in St. Charles, there is a push to follow in Arizona's footsteps. In your experience, how would these laws impact the state of Missouri? Channel 9 and the St. Louis Beacon through our Public Insight Network would like to hear you insights on this topic. Please share: New immigration laws in Arizona ... should Missouri adopt them too?

Posted 6 days ago |

Comments (41)

No topic today arouses more heat than Immigration. At KETC (St Louis' Public TV Station) we have a project underway to explore Immigration and how it affects the nation. Before we go online, we have been looking at a number of places where we could get a feel for the pulse.

Sydney Meyer, went to Linkedin where she asked a St Louis Group this question. We have been a bit stunned by the reaction. There is a strong debate, as we did expect, but also it has been very civil - a real discourse.

Why, when the norm on the web is to find insult and screaming matches, is this debate so civil?

I think that the civility is related to the fact that there is no hiding on Linkedin. Your identity is central. So what you say is connected to you. This group in addition is located in St Louis. So the chances are that you may come across the other person.

Anonymity is held by many to be an ideal. I am not so sure.

I never considered Linkedin as a place for debate but now I am thinking that it may be a great place to talk about controversial issues.

What has been your experience?

This past weekend the acclaimed public radio program This American Life aired a new program on urban legends (episode 406), and they included the following piece (“Fleeing is Believing”) on the things immigrants hear about life in the United States that they simply cannot believe are true.

It’s a story of public affection, Christmas lights, homelessness and how we live with our pets, expertly told by multimedia reporter Mary Wiltenburg.

Tune in to This American Life on St. Louis Public Radio each weekend or on public radio stations nationwide.

See us through the eyes of a new comer - we seem weird! It's not just public displays of affection (PDA), or Gay Couples but who would be Homeless?

What a journey our culture presents!

That phrase -- "papers please" - is something that the authorities asked you in the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. It has never been something we ever expected to hear uttered in the United States of America. It is as un-American as jack boots. Unless this law is stopped, thousands of people - many of them perfectly legal American citizens - will begin to hear it regularly in the state of Arizona.

Let's be clear. In a free society people should never have to worry that the plainclothes police officer around the next corner has the right - even the obligation - to demand to see their papers simply because they have brown skin or are chatting with their friends in Spanish, or Polish, or Italian.

This moral outrage will create an enormous backlash that will badly damage the reputation and economy of the state of Arizona. It will profoundly wound the state's massive convention and tourism business. It will make Arizona a symbol of racial profiling and conflict. As the controversy over the law explodes across the country, organizations of all types are already canceling conferences and meetings, and families are changing their vacation plans. Arizona will soon become the butt of jokes on late night TV, and its leaders will join the ranks of Bull Connor and George Wallace as symbols of what is not best in America.

The new law will not only cost the state in tourist dollars and reputation. Law enforcement officials consider it a danger to public safety. When this bill goes into effect, what family with an undocumented member will now call the police to report any ordinary crime?

But ironically, the passage of this law may also serve as a wakeup call to people around the country who believe in fundamental American values. In the same way the excesses of Alabama's leaders helped pass the civil rights laws, so this un-American law may spur Congress to fix our profoundly broken immigration system.

The fact of the matter is that there are only three realistic choices when it comes to immigration:

• The status quo, where 12 million people live in the shadows of our society, and can be easily exploited by unscrupulous employers and used to undercut wages for every American - where everyday families are broken apart by immigration raids and the children of immigrants are denied the opportunity to go to college and contribute to our society.
• Un-American measures such as the one just passed in Arizona that betray our values and will never actually solve the problem. Of course, the bottom line is that our government is not going to round up twelve million undocumented immigrants, put them on trains, buses and airplanes, and ship them back to their countries of origin. Mass deportation of millions of workers and their families is a phony non-solution that is both impractical and un-American. It is not a politically, morally or economically acceptable solution to the problem of illegal immigration. As a practical matter it will never happen - and if it ever did, economists have estimated it would cost our economy 2.6 trillion dollars in gross domestic product over the next ten years.
• Comprehensive immigration reform that will strengthen the rule of law, level the playing field in the workplace, reduce illegal immigration to a trickle, and reward those who play by the rules. It would do so through a combination of smart and effective border enforcement, a crackdown on illegal hiring and unfair labor practices, modernizing the legal immigration system, and requiring those here illegally to register with the government, pass background checks, study English, pay taxes, and get in line to work towards citizenship.

 

Immigration is going to be the litmus test of America this year - KETC is working to make sure that the full picture is available. http://explorehomeland.org/blog/2010/04/25/immigration-more-questions-than-an...

I'm British - my white Brit/Canadian son is married to Korean/Canadian woman. How will they label their children?

What about you?

Immigration - It's complicated!